“Digital cameras are doomed!”

[chipman]

Are digital cameras doomed? Of course they are, and the replacement is already in the labs.
We take 2D pictures of 3D objects, and then blow and go about realism. The future will be holograms,
true 3D representations of reality, not flattened out images.

As for the AI issues today, the computer taking over for the human?
You should have started that battle when AE and AF began.

 

[Tom Caldwell]

I'd say in this example, AI is influencing the tool. Clearly, many of us would enjoy a camera that automatically delivers "perfect" exposure, white balance, focus, sharpness and saturation," DEPENDING of course on our subjective definition of "perfect" AND whether or not we want it perfect in this case.

In terms of the difference between "journalism/documentary" and "fine art/ pictorialism" well, isn't that always subjective? I think so. HCB decided upon the perfect moment. Walker Evans where to point the camera. Ansel how dark to make the background. And me, should I blur that waterfall as it falleth, or snap it at a higher shutter speed to look more "natural."

So there's art in art and art in documentary as well, right? I suspect AI is a long way in determining much meaningful in this regard, other than knowing that X% of the population likes blurred water waterfalls, or Y% don't care if a photographer clones a beer can from the sidewalk as his subject glides by.

I wonder if the ease with which users of real cameras can override AI may be one advantage over computational cell phones.

Yes I quite agree. It is good to be able to over-ride the camera's idea of perfection with your own which might not be perfect.

Where it crosses into more difficult territory is when manipulated images are passed off as real when the manipulation is much more than a mere wash. The classic case is where images containing models are primped over to pose the perfect person. Not all are of course and presumably we are mentally primed to treat these sorts of images as normally unobtainable levels of imagined beauty.

Of course if we purchase the clothes or jewellery/perfume languidly shown then we might look so good and hardly need a makeover out of the camera.

I do like painterly images myself and I hope that the quality of the original survives into the end result. I am as much into photography as art as photography as realism. Both have their own niche.

 

[tbcass]

I bet you have also seen them before, the doomsday predictions that digital cameras are going to be displaced by new technology. While skimming through comments on the latest DPR announcement, I bumped into this one:

I thought to post the following as a reply, but then I realized it would be a waste of time given the uncertain future of the DPR forum content, and this forum is probably a better place. Maybe this can serve as inspiration for others when they need ammo to debunk similar claims.

Phones are only comparable to professional cameras in a limited set of circumstances. There's only so much one can do with a tiny sensor and lens crammed inside a device that has to do a gazillion other things, before one bumps into fundamental limitations, which a device whose every component is designed for the sole purpose of taking photos does not have.

Comparing drones to digital cameras is… weird. Drones are flying machines that may optionally have a special digital camera attached to them. They are good for aerial shots and not much else. I wouldn't recommend trying to use a drone to take someone's portrait, or a macro photo of a flower. Are you going to hold the drone in front of you, or are you going to try to maneuver it such that its propellers just don't shred that person's face or the flowers? I can see it before me, a couple sitting in a restaurant: “honey, you look really nice in this candlelight. Let me grab my drone.”

As for the AI things, how will they replace the act of taking real photos? When on vacation you see something nice, or when you want to take a photo of family members, are you then going to grab your nearest computing device, launch some AI app, and start describing what you're seeing, in the hopes that the system can somehow replicate what you're looking at, or are you simply going to take that photo yourself? Again, try to apply this to the restaurant scene… “No, her nose is too big, enhance, enhance!”
Also, those systems need to learn from input material to be able to generate output. Only if the input is good, the output has a chance of being good, otherwise it's GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out. What do you think these things are being trained on? Photos made by real photographers using real cameras, right. If you see really impressive demo photos generated with an AI system, the demo was likely rigged to basically replicate some of the training images with few modifications. Ask the system something that cannot be pasted together from bits of its training data, and the result will be awful.

Digital cameras aren't going away. Their market might shrink, but it will not disappear.

There's a difference between an AI-processed RAW photo and an AI-generated photo. Processing with AI is meant to improve the quality by removing noise, sharpening the image, etc, all things that are done manually by a traditional editor or by the JPEG engine of a camera. That is photography. An AI-generated picture is more closely related to a painting or drawing and is not photography.

 

[tbcass]

Ai - what is that? Does this mean pointing the camera at a subject with great lens in "A" mode and having the camera with its impressive expensive lens work out shutter speed for perfect exposure, adjust for perfect white balance , grab more dynamic range out of shadows and highlights, and of course glide quickly to perfect focus in split parts of a second then effortlessly keep that perfect focus of that moving object. All this and perfect life-like reproduction. What a wonder, and all internal camera body Ai. We don't all like it but the market demands it.

What the camera or AI and The photographer think is perfect may not be the same. That's why more serious photographers don't use full auto modes. For serious photography, AI can be useful if it can be customized to personal taste. That is best done on the computer where the future lies with customizable AI processed RAW images. Topaz Photo AI for example.

 

[clewis010]

I would make a couple of comments. First, it isn't always the technology you expect which ends up being revolutionary. Second, it can take technology a long time to really transform industries. Third, progress tends to be incremental.

So there are several different things here. AI has been around for some time. Has it really revolutionized anything? Not really. Does it have that potential? Maybe but, equally, it may just sit alongside traditional techniques. Good for some things not so good for others.

What we are seeing in digital photography is incremental progress. Better sensors, better processors, better AF, better lenses, more automated functionality (e.g. focus stacking) etc.. Bearing in mind that digital photography covers everything from the phone to the really high end stuff used for those wildlife documentaries, it is far from doomed. However, what we might see is a decline in certain types of digital photography gear. For example, DSLRs and maybe, sooner or later, mirrorless cameras as technology improves and other types of gear offers a competitive alternative. However, it won't happen overnight. Photographers won't abandon their investment in gear while it will still do the job. Just as with computers, they will upgrade over time.

Going forward, people are still going to be taking photos and still going to be shooting videos. The gear they use may change and the technology might make those photos and videos better but I'm not going to be getting the computer to generate photos of the grandchildren or the label on the bottle of wine that I want to remember for future reference.

 

[Tom Caldwell]

I would make a couple of comments. First, it isn't always the technology you expect which ends up being revolutionary. Second, it can take technology a long time to really transform industries. Third, progress tends to be incremental.

So there are several different things here. AI has been around for some time. Has it really revolutionized anything? Not really. Does it have that potential? Maybe but, equally, it may just sit alongside traditional techniques. Good for some things not so good for others.

What we are seeing in digital photography is incremental progress. Better sensors, better processors, better AF, better lenses, more automated functionality (e.g. focus stacking) etc.. Bearing in mind that digital photography covers everything from the phone to the really high end stuff used for those wildlife documentaries, it is far from doomed. However, what we might see is a decline in certain types of digital photography gear. For example, DSLRs and maybe, sooner or later, mirrorless cameras as technology improves and other types of gear offers a competitive alternative. However, it won't happen overnight. Photographers won't abandon their investment in gear while it will still do the job. Just as with computers, they will upgrade over time.

Going forward, people are still going to be taking photos and still going to be shooting videos. The gear they use may change and the technology might make those photos and videos better but I'm not going to be getting the computer to generate photos of the grandchildren or the label on the bottle of wine that I want to remember for future reference.

Thoughtful, thanks.

Liken it to mobile phone cameras where most do not really want to control their essence but rather wish a quite useful snap for reference and/or sharing. Well before pocketable mobile phones I was using a compact and capable Ricoh GRD camera on my hip-worn belt case to photograph 'opportunities' or as a mobile photocopier of documents and other things that I needed to copy for quick reference - exactly what many (most?) mobile phone cameras are used for today. The 'big' camera is for 'serious' photography but many still want it to be easy to use. The multiple often contradictory manual settings on cameras are a huge hurdle for new users. Unfortunately 'proper camera' in the minds of most must still look much like a now redundant dslr and be large enough to be imposing and take lenses that were first designed for 135 format film. Traditional concepts take a lot of changing. One might wonder how many people buy their proper faux-dslr body with FF sensor and kit lens and then just bring it out specially for use "on auto" for feast days and holidays - just like their dad did with his slr .....

Luckily digital film is now cheap and those that have a camera with easy to find/use controls and a will to learn them can get a lot of amusement out of testing, experimenting and much practise. That is if they find learning to be mentally invigorating. However most will opt for easy capture - good looking images and put away their phones if the photography conditions in mind gets too testing. .... and so for the photography industry must adjust to a smaller market for those that still wish to have (figuratively speaking) a camera with 'a gear box' that has to driven whilst keeping sensitive watch to the captures and adjust where necessary - just like some who have grown up with manual gearbox cars of relatively low power and been taught to listen to the engine and change gears themselves as necessary.

Cars with auto-invoke wipers, and central locking are very useful Ai but I am not sure that I will ever be ready for driverless cars without a steering wheel.

 

[Downunder]

Hmm... I'd describe this differently, having cut my teeth on a real old-school 1950's manual film camera (Voigtlander Vito B) and handheld light meter, followed by various SLR kits before the digital era.

When you have the time to futz with the camera - compose the shot, set focus, shutter speed, aperture and ISO etc it's all fine and dandy. And you took the time to think about each shot for another reason - a roll of film only had 36 frames, and processing and printing each one cost money, about a dollar. I loved the Panasonic LX3 and LX5 for this reason - their manual controls were simple, direct and effective.

But when there is zero time to futz with the camera - you need one that will nail a passable shot in the blink of an eye. The Kodak Box Brownie and Instamatic did as much in the film era, and the digital equivalent is "Point & Shoot" cameras which have done this all very reliably.

IMHO where AI can help is noise reduction, and sharpening, but that's about where it should stop. Beyond that the result is well, artificial, by definition.

My feet are firmly rooted in the real world, not daydreams.

 

[Tom Caldwell]

Hmm... I'd describe this differently, having cut my teeth on a real old-school 1950's manual film camera (Voigtlander Vito B) and handheld light meter, followed by various SLR kits before the digital era.

When you have the time to futz with the camera - compose the shot, set focus, shutter speed, aperture and ISO etc it's all fine and dandy. And you took the time to think about each shot for another reason - a roll of film only had 36 frames, and processing and printing each one cost money, about a dollar. I loved the Panasonic LX3 and LX5 for this reason - their manual controls were simple, direct and effective.

But when there is zero time to futz with the camera - you need one that will nail a passable shot in the blink of an eye. The Kodak Box Brownie and Instamatic did as much in the film era, and the digital equivalent is "Point & Shoot" cameras which have done this all very reliably.

IMHO where AI can help is noise reduction, and sharpening, but that's about where it should stop. Beyond that the result is well, artificial, by definition.

My feet are firmly rooted in the real world, not daydreams.

I think that we are both on the same planet and singing form the exact same songbook.

I was more thinking about what the real market was about. 90% looking for easy click and will put up with less image quality because they are not interested in how it is done. The other 10% get their joy out at least contributing some knowledge learned or natural into actually 'making' the image.

I go back to an Agfa Silette of the 1960's and after marriage used my new wife's Kodak Instamatic for early family as we could not afford much more than the accasional film for special occasions. Later I advanced to the old-school manual-everything Ricoh XR2 slr.

 

[RBIV]

In some ways, we can have it all today.

Last year I purchased a Nikon Zfc, frankly because I liked the concept, and certainly the looks. I turned the articulated screen in, and went out with my "film shoot" buddies using full manual mode. It was fun, but... yeah, I got caught. Good laugh from all.

Then, just to see what happens, I put the thing into Program Mode, single center point focus, Matrix metering, NEF raw file, and used it strictly as a point 'n shoot. Terrific results from really a small, lower tier (compared to a Z9) camera.

This may be the beauty of AI. Choice., given we have option to turn some or all of it off, (not that a Zfc has much AI).. But it has some, depending on how we define it.

 

[Downunder]

... we're all doomed, and all our pixels will be reduced to electrons, and float away into the ether...